Andries Gerhardus Visser

Monument to Andries Gerhardus Visser in Heidelberg (Gauteng)

Andries Gerhardus Visser (born March 1, 1878 , † June 10, 1929 in Heidelberg , South Africa ) was a South African poet and doctor who lived in Heidelberg for a long time.

Life

Visser's parents lived in Carnarvon (South Africa) and his mother became pregnant with him when a major period of drought drove the parents away from home. Andries was born in Zaaifontein , Fraserburg district , in a material warehouse in the shade of a pear tree. The family settled in Daljosafat , where the son attended the Hugenot Memorial School. The later writers Totius and DF Malherbe were among his schoolmates here .

Visser spent his high school at the Normaalkollege in Cape Town . From 1901 to 1906 he went to Edinburgh , Scotland to study medicine . After graduating, he worked as a doctor in Carnarvon (1907–1909), Steytlerville (1909–1916) and in Heidelberg, South Africa (1916–1929). In his Heidelberg years he was a close friend of the poet Eugène Marais . He married twice, in 1913 Lettie Conradie, who died in 1920, and Marie de Villiers. Visser died in Heidelberg in 1929, where you can still see his house - from the outside - today. The Visser monument is one of the few sights in the town .

literature

Visser was already publishing at the age of eighteen. He won the Hertzog Prize for his first and second collection of poems . His poems are characterized by simplicity. He used traditional forms of poetry such as the rondeau , as well as other stylistic devices, such as renaming idioms or epigrams and puns .